The FX5200 isn't great at all. It doesn't even support Core Image (even though System Profiler claims it does). The Radeon 9550 from the last iBook G4 would have been great. It actually supports Core Image.
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Goodbye to PPC for now?
- Thread starter mectojic
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The fx 5200 did support Core Image. I know it’s a bad video card but it was used in the PowerBook g4 and also works in Motion which needs Core Image. Yeah the 9550 would be great too.
PowerBook G4 12" / FX 5200 Core Image Ambiguity.
I was perusing Apple Developer tech notes from 2005 and came across the following clarification about the GPU acceleration on the PB 12" (1Ghz+) and 2003-2004 G5 stock FX 5200 GPU. I ran some of my own non-scientific tests with Core Image and OpenGL and my results on a PowerBook G4 12" 1.5Ghz...
forums.macrumors.com
And I thought I had low expectations... You must have the patience of a saint @joshjohnson
I’m regularly known to enjoy Doom 3 at 20fps on my Mac mini. I did overclock the cpu to 1.58 and the ram is 1gb but of course everything is stock. I am happy with the gameplay of Star Fox on SNES and the frame rate of Doom on snes doesn’t bother me. I guess I’m weird. Lol
Also, I did wait the overnight it took to encode an h.264 on said mini of 1 minute or so of actual video so I guess I do. Lol
Use Intertube, TenFiveTube or switch to a mobile device user agent to get the clutter free version of Youtube.
Better still, go to an Invidious proxy like Iteroni for an even more economical experience.
Shouldn't have taken that long....
DIY Benchmark
A recent thread discussed the accuracy of Geekbench and methods by which to establish the performance differences between machines. With that in mind, I put together this test: A 5 second 1080P MPEG4 video clip, converted in MPEG Streamclip to a 640X360 h.264 file. All files are bundled...
forums.macrumors.com
I'm rather goofy in that not only do I lack Intel Macs but I've banned them from ever coming into the Lab. Mostly because x86 is boring and if I was able to get rid of all of my x86 hardware I would. Nonetheless, all of my PCs are x86 with no end to that in sight, but Macs are either the Power Macs or the M1 on my shelf and nowhere in between.
Well, I hate to say it but OneDrive only downloads. You can’t upload, so it is half useful. iCloud won’t finish loading, and Dropbox won’t log in.
What I would really like, is a way to render YouTube without relying on an external processor, proxies kind of feel like cheating and I may as well have a different computer at that point.
I totally agree but none of those solutions do that - they'll all just presenting a minimal interface, there's no transcoding going on.
A site such as https://video.2yxa.mobi/? does transcode but the delay is minimal - it's ideal for sub 500Mhz G3s if you can't be bothered to install yt-dlp/PPCMC7 etc or you're on OS9
I'd even say the best thing you can buy with money is time.
Recently there were a couple of things to fix in the bathroom, so I called a plumber. I could have done it myself, but since I'm not experienced with it and don't have the best tools this would have taken a whole sunday afternoon. The plumber was done in half an hour and I spent the afternoon relaxing. For me that's money well spent.
My dad taught me to work on cars, the basic stuff: change oil/oil filter, replace alternator/starter, etc. All pretty easy stuff when you're working on 1970s and early 1980s cars.
Then my parents gave me their old 1985 Accord in the late 1990s and that's when I started going to mechanics to fix things. In order to replace the alternator on a 1985 Accord you have to drop one of the trans-axles to get access to it. I don't have those tools and I have zero skill/experience to do with that. Things only got more complicated after that.
I could still change the oil, etc, but that requires an investment in certain things I am unwilling to have sit around in my garage for the occasional use.
So, yeah, I'm right there with you.
You probably know why that is already, but Dropbox dropped PowerPC support years ago.
It’s more tenfourfox has a hard time processing the login scripts on the web pages. Not a priority as one can imagine now.
I see, you meant through the browser. Got it. For some reason I was thinking you meant the app.
Yeah, even if you could access the website through T4Fx, the website is a poor way to work on files. You have to download them, edit them and then reupload them. It works of course, but is clunky in comparison to having the Dropbox app itself.
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Clunky yea, but doable or not is another matter. It’s up to TFF and devs to trouble shoot the website behavior and see what it’s doing to try to implement it, but on ppc I bet it’s just not worth it. The work around is to use another computer, mount the folder or drive shared with Dropbox or OneDrive or iCloud or etc and just use the network to keep the files you are working on in sync.
For a time, before the arrival of my MacPro as my primary Mac, that is exactly what I was doing.
Honestly I respect anyone who is trying to keep old hardware alive - no matter what vendor or architecture.
From the right to repair and keeping things usable point of view that is something we all should do way more.
Sometimes newer programs have gotten worse, lost certain features or are just too needy in terms of system requirements but let's face it:
Old machines are power hungry for what they deliver in calculating power most of it goes into making warm air.
Some systems can be emulated very well but I know some people in the industry who have to keep alive 30-40 year old systems because the programs are running on 16 bit architecture since then.
When apple dropped support for 32 bit software a whole lot of older games and productivity software just went obsolete, even still perfectly usable - for example Adobe Suite CS3. I had to install Windows 10 to keep using it on an up-to-date OS. And with the M-series SoC apple is shortening product lifecycles even more.
Releasing major releases for macOS every year and dropping support for machines that are capable of running their current OS just like a 2012 MBP is just wrong.
From the right to repair and keeping things usable point of view that is something we all should do way more.
Sometimes newer programs have gotten worse, lost certain features or are just too needy in terms of system requirements but let's face it:
Old machines are power hungry for what they deliver in calculating power most of it goes into making warm air.
Some systems can be emulated very well but I know some people in the industry who have to keep alive 30-40 year old systems because the programs are running on 16 bit architecture since then.
When apple dropped support for 32 bit software a whole lot of older games and productivity software just went obsolete, even still perfectly usable - for example Adobe Suite CS3. I had to install Windows 10 to keep using it on an up-to-date OS. And with the M-series SoC apple is shortening product lifecycles even more.
Releasing major releases for macOS every year and dropping support for machines that are capable of running their current OS just like a 2012 MBP is just wrong.
All part of the inevitable trajectory into the societal cul de sac we're headed. Unless you're rich of course
Compatibility is always something I wish for- proper compatibility especially, not 3rd party workarounds. Every time I’ve upgraded Macs, I’ve lost something- OS9 native booting, then Rosetta support, then 32-bit app support, and now:
One thing I hate about the M1 Mini is that its OS, Big Sur, dropped AFP file sharing. This was the easiest way to do file sharing to 10.4 PPC (the SMB sharing it offers doesn’t seem to work below Lion/Snow Leopard).
So, my server is still a 2010 Mac Mini Server, IMO a really fantastic machine for that purpose, being one of the low-power Core 2 Duos in the efficient unibody enclosure; but the M1 Mini is just a little more power efficient than that, and would’ve been nice to use as a server.
Why did Apple drop AFP file sharing? Apple just likes to keep its offerings simple and clean- it never supports features that are past their mainstream use. Hence other minor but annoying losses, like that loss of floppy drive support (in 10.15?)
One thing I hate about the M1 Mini is that its OS, Big Sur, dropped AFP file sharing. This was the easiest way to do file sharing to 10.4 PPC (the SMB sharing it offers doesn’t seem to work below Lion/Snow Leopard).
So, my server is still a 2010 Mac Mini Server, IMO a really fantastic machine for that purpose, being one of the low-power Core 2 Duos in the efficient unibody enclosure; but the M1 Mini is just a little more power efficient than that, and would’ve been nice to use as a server.
Why did Apple drop AFP file sharing? Apple just likes to keep its offerings simple and clean- it never supports features that are past their mainstream use. Hence other minor but annoying losses, like that loss of floppy drive support (in 10.15?)
This is why I'd call the Apple ecosystem a walled garden:
Less support for open standards and more Apple-only services and interfaces and as long as people are buying new devices they will not change a bit.
Less support for open standards and more Apple-only services and interfaces and as long as people are buying new devices they will not change a bit.
I figured this was common knowledge and is the reason we play with these old machines they dont care much about anymore.
That's odd. I wonder if Apple has revised the SMB protocol through the years because it enabled me to network an iBook G3 running Tiger with a Windows Vista PC and share files from the latter to the former.
It was El Capitan (10.11) that saw the demise of floppy support. I'm increasingly convinced that Apple are determined to steer consumers towards a particular direction (hardware and software) that limits their choices and increases Apple's control over how their products are used. Honestly, how much space did the code for floppy support really take up within the OS? It had to be inconsequential. Linux still supports floppies despite Torvalds sounding the death knell in 2019 and in December 2022 a bugfix was added for floppy support. Windows 11 retains floppy support - including for 5.25" drives!
I figured this was common knowledge and is the reason we play with these old machines they dont care much about anymore.
They care enough to pull support from legacy media formats in order to try and hinder our ability to exchange files/install software onto those old machines using our newer ones.
They've become everything that I loathed about Microsoft and exactly what the railed against in 1984. Yes, you're right - continued sales = validation for their misguided path.